The sci-fi classic from 1954, Them!, has giant ants attacking in the desert. It also has some very creepy moments and remarkable special effects, as well as earnest and believable performances by James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, and Joan Weldon.

It Came From The Desert also has giant ants attacking in the desert.

And that’s where the similarities end.

Moto-cross rider Lukas (Alex Mills) and his friend/mechanic Brian (Harry Lister Smith) are headed out to the desert to celebrate Lukas’ birthday…or moto-cross win…or something.  Along for the ride is Lisa (Vanessa Grasse), Brian’s secret crush. When our heroic trio show up to the middle of the nowhere, all their friends are already there, chugging brewskis and badly dancing under some tarps to generic background music.  After getting cockblocked by a rival moto-cross bully, Brian wanders away from the party to ponder his life. Luke shows up to get him back to the party and spies a tunnel carved out of the rock. He drags Brian in to investigate.

While Lukas is on the excited prowl for more beer as they go from room to room, Brian is piecing together the purpose of this secret government lair. Experiments? What is “Batch 9?”  Where is everybody who works here? Or “worked” here?  And then there is a GIANT GODDAMNED ANT! RIGHT THERE!

Don’t worry, it’s just some barely-tolerable CGI.

Shenanigans ensue.  And by that I mean giant ants slaughtering drunken partiers, talking to each other (with helpful subtitles for the monolingual among us), and cocooning some victims to help feed the larvae that will be hatching soon.

It’s not as fun as it sounds. ICFTD is trying very very hard to be a snarky comedy horror sci-fi, but it’s not funny enough to be comedy, it’s not scary enough to be horror, and it’s not sci-fi enough to be sci-fi. It just plays things way too safe for it to be interesting.The acting is uniformly bland and middle-of-the-road, the directing (Marko Mäkilaakso, who also designed the ants and…did the music?) and camera work (aside from a few beautiful desert vistas) is uninspired. This movie isn’t even bad enough to be a SyFy schlock flick, like Sharktopus or Lavalantula.  It just sits there, taking up 90 minutes of your time and giving very little back.  A pity.